Art Pyke started from humble beginnings, a 17-year-old kid from Moncton New Brunswick who ventured to Boston with $30 US in his pocket and plans to make something of himself. He worked, he slept, he studied, and came away with a degree in clinical psychology from Temple University; this knowledge would serve him well as his later careers shifted from accounting for a large construction company to sales, where he excelled in everything from selling cars to pharmaceuticals with one of the world’s largest companies in the field.
Before he ventured down those paths, however, he had planned to go back to Boston in pursuit of an MBA after some time bouncing through the U.S. and Canada, but plans changed immediately when he met Betty in London Ontario, the quiet charmer who would become his wife and partner for decades.
They sit together in their suite in the Village of Arbour Trails in Guelph overlooking the garden their son helped plant and the pond just beyond. They recount the life they’ve shared together and the spirit of positivity that has carried them through fortunes good and bad. They talk of their love of music, and how in their big rambling house in Elora where they lived for 23 years, they would play together, Betty on her grand piano and Art on his manual concert organ.
Music, Art says, “was therapy for me because I would come home after a crazy week or day and I’d sit down at that organ at 11 o’clock at night and just start playing; brought me right down out of the air, so we really enjoyed that.”
The major part of Art’s career saw him travelling all over the world for 30 years as one of Pfizer’s top sales managers, which was fascinating at times, and difficult at others. Betty was most often at home with their three children, and she worked, as well.
Yet they carried through and built a beautiful life together, centred around faith in the power of positivity.
In recent years, that’s been needed more than ever. Art’s health took a turn when he was around 75 and a neurological disorder eventually led to a complex surgery that left him with some mobility challenges. Prostate cancer followed a few years later and in his early 80s, doctors told him he had three years to live.
He’s 93 as he recounts the story, and Betty’s eyes well up a little; it’s difficult to worry for someone you have loved for a lifetime.
“He’s in a lot of pain,” Betty says, “and it’s hard to see; you want to help.”
Yet through it all, Art says his goal is to continue to spread positivity to all his neighbours in the Village. They moved in in the spring of 2023, and he continues to defy the odds doctors give him.
His message is simple: finding happiness and positivity is a choice you make within yourself.
“It’s a choice that takes discipline,” he says, “and anything worthwhile, you gotta’ work at. But once you start working at it, it gets easier and if you’re positive, it will reflect on other people.”
And it has.
The team in the Village wanted Art and Betty to share their story, for their spirit does rub off on others and the Village is brighter with them in it. Change is inevitable in life, and people living in retirement or long-term care settings have faced their share of it over lifetimes. Living well in the face of change is all in how you look at it, says a kid from Moncton who made his way through life and love to the Village of Arbour Trails.
It’s advice to stand the test of time.
